Flavour, smack. The salt of youth is that vigour and strong passion which then predominates. Shakespeare uses the term on several occasions for strong amorous passion. Thus Iago refers to it as hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride (Othello, iii. 3). The Duke calls Angelos base passion his salt imagination, because he supposed his victim to be Isabella, and not his betrothed wife whom the Duke forced him to marry. (Measure for Measure, v. 1.)

1

Though we are justices, and doctors, and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us.Merry Wives of Windsor, ii. 3.

Spilling salt was held to be an unlucky omen by the Romans, and the superstition has descended to ourselves. In Leonardo da Vincis famous picture of the Lords Supper, Judas Iscariot is known by the salt-cellar knocked over accidentally by his arm. Salt was used in sacrifice by the Jews, as well as by the Greeks and Romans; and it is still used in baptism by the Roman Catholic clergy. It was an emblem of purity and the sanctifying influence of a holy life on others. Hence our Lord tells His disciples they are the salt of the earth. Spilling the salt after it was placed on the head of the victim was a bad omen, hence the superstition.

2

A covenant of salt (Numbers xviii. 19). A covenant which could not be broken. As salt was a symbol of incorruption, it, of course, symbolised perpetuity.

3

The Lord God of Israel gave the kingdom to David by a covenant of salt.2 Chronicles xiii. 5.

Cum grano salis. With great limitation; with its grain of salt, or truth. As salt is sparingly used in condiments, so is truth in the remark just made.

4

He wont earn salt for his porridge. He will never earn a penny.

5

Not worth ones salt. Not worth the expense of the food he eats.

6

To eat a mans salt. To partake of his hospitality. Among the Arabs to eat a mans salt was a sacred bond between the host and guest. No one who has eaten of anothers salt should speak ill of him or do him an ill turn.

7

One does not eat a mans salt at these dinners. There is nothing sacred in London hospitality.Thackeray.

To sit above the saltin a place of distinction. Formerly the family saler (salt cellar) was of massive silver, and placed in the middle of the table. Persons of distinction sat above the saleri.e. between it and the head of the table; dependents and inferior guests sat below.

8

We took him up above the salt and made much of him.Kingsley: Westward Ho! chap. xv.

True to his salt. Faithful to his employers. Here salt means salary or interests. (See above, To eat a mans salt.)

9

M. Waddington owes his fortune and his consideration to his fathers adopted country [France], and he is true to his salt.Newspaper paragraph, March 6, 1893.